Four Cranes ‘thread needle’ to place pipeline under Ohio River

Threading the needle” is such a daunting task that the expression itself has come to define triumph over a difficult undertaking. Now imagine the thread is 2,000 feet long, the eye of the needle runs under the Ohio River and completing the job requires four cranes working in precise synchronicity.

That gives you some idea of the challenge facing the crew from ALL Crane & Equipment Rental Corp. of Nitro, West Virginia, a member of the ALL Family of Companies, during its work on the Leach Xpress pipeline project. The 160-mile pipeline, owned by TransCanada, transports natural gas throughout West Virginia, Ohio and Pennsylvania.

“It’s not just the sheer size of the pipes that make a project like this delicate, but the fact that angles needed to be continuously adjusted as the pipeline is threaded through the hole,” said Jason Thomas, sales manager at ALL Crane & Equipment Rental. “A lift like this isn’t common, but our seasoned team has done many of them. We use that experience to develop a solid game plan, and we know we’re going to be successful.”

The four cranes chosen for the job, in order from closest to the hole to farthest away, were a Grove GMK5165 with a 165-ton capacity, a Grove GMK6250L (250 ton), a Link-Belt ATC-3210 (210 ton) and a Grove GMK5225 (225 ton). Because of the ever-changing angles needed to feed the pipe into the hole, boom lengths shifted from 80-120 feet among the four cranes used on the project. Each crane used its full counterweight.

A total of 6,000 feet of pipe divided into three 2,000-foot sections, or runs, were fed into a pre-drilled hole originating in Ceredo, West Virginia. The hole tunneled under the Ohio River and came out on the other side in Burlington, Ohio, where a tugger operated by a different company helped pull the pipe through.

When a run of pipe reached its end, the four cranes also had to hold the next piece in place as welders connected it to the previous length. The 36-inch pipe had to be welded to exacting standards so the finished product would safely accommodate compressed natural gas. For this reason, welding each connection point took approximately eight hours.

“It took a while to get set up for the pick,” Thomas added. “Each crane needed 30 feet of ground prep, then another 20 feet of space between it and the next crane. Together, our cranes were taking up a 250-foot area.”

Crews started the pick Aug. 30, 2017. Teams of operators worked around-the-clock to complete the task by Sept. 3, the day before Labor Day.